The Pantomime
by Fairyfloss01
Summary: The story behind Eric's pink spandex and what happened between him and the psychic.  Rated T for now.  As usual, characters belong to Charlaine Harris, this is just what she's inspired me to write.


**Hi Everyone!**

**Am I crazy for starting another story when I can hardly keep up with one? Well, this one will only take a few chapters. I've wanted to come up with story that would explain Eric's pink spandex and the story of the psychic for a while and I came up with this. It's been in my head for a while and I just had to get it before my head explodes! Please enjoy and more to come with DMW and this soon.**

* * *

On such a stifling hot night, even the animals are restless.

His senses were assaulted by the stench of popcorn and cotton candy. He couldn't imagine how humans could consume some of the disgusting garbage they called food. The thought left a foul taste at the back of his throat. But he hadn't eaten anything for almost a thousand years, who was he to judge?

Eric looked out of his trailer into the meandering crowd of good, nuclear families that were typical of every town they visited. It was Sunday and they were dressed up in their finest clothes. "I wonder if their god pays attention to such details," he thought to himself. His attention was drawn to a beautiful woman in a flowing white dress, with a red flower print, that went all the way down to her ankles. Her chestnut hair hung loose to her waist and a yellow dandelion was tucked in her ear; no doubt a gift from one of the children tugging at her skirts.

As he watched the wonderful silhouette of the woman disappear behind the main tent he realized how perplexed he was by the Women's Movement. He understood that they wanted equal rights and he had no problem with that at all. On the contrary, he welcomed the short skirts and sexual liberation the last ten years had brought; and was certainly having a lot of fun. When they performed in larger cities the fans that waited for him after the show had become more upfront and open with what they wanted from him. This was a welcome change. It saved him from having to woo or chase anyone to feed; now all that was required was a little simple glamouring in his trailer. They remembered the sex but not the bite and everyone was happy. It was a good time to be alive, or living dead. He chuckled to himself.

He had noticed from the movement of her breasts that the chestnut haired woman wasn't wearing anything underneath. He couldn't fathom how not wearing a brassiere would advance the agenda when he could only think of ripping the dress off and sinking his teeth into those ample pleasures. He had to find a chance to glamour her before she left tonight.

* * *

The whole tent was dark but for the spotlight shining on the short, stunted figure in the centre. His presence alone didn't warrant anybody's attention, but when his eloquent voice rang through the microphone, the whole audience fell silent to hear what he had to say.

"Gravity. We are all bound by it. There isn't a single matter on this Earth that doesn't follow its rules. Humans have been trying to push its limits since the time of Da Vinci. And few have ever come close to breaking its hold. Ladies and Gentlemen, the act that you've been waiting for, the brother and sister whose death defying act is the closest anyone has come to human flight. I now present to you the Falun's Flying Trapeze!"

As Charlie, their ringmaster, announced his name, Eric stepped out onto the platform. The spotlight hit his pink spandex leotard with the aqua flames going up the sides of the leg. He lifted his arm to help introduce Pam as she stepped onto the opposite platform in her matching pink leotard with the faux aqua colored tutu attached to its waist. He got Pam to wear this matching outfit because it was the sheerest of the costumes they had. A quick search found the chestnut haired girl in the audience. He made eye contact with her and tightened his butt to draw attention to his male anatomy. Anyone in the audience who paid attention could tell what he had to offer. Eric counted on the chestnut haired girl seeing it as well.

Pam glared at him from the opposite platform, having clearly figured out that he made her wear the costume she hated most because he had spotted someone he'd like to fuck. She had aptly named these "The Fuck Shows".

He would miss her when they disbanded. The circus management had been discussing going their separate ways for a while now. Though Pam hadn't told him, he knew she had formed an attachment to a local vampire here in Minnesota. He knew she'd been working the courage to ask if she could leave him and be independent from him for the first time in her undead life. He had no problem with her leaving, it was about time for Pam to live on her own, but she had to be the one to ask. It was a rite of passage.

The traveling circus gig had been good while it lasted. Everyone but the animal caregivers and the ringmaster's wife were vampires. The circus was the perfect cover the house to go travelling from town to town, feeding on the locals, then leave before anyone had a clue as to the origin of the mysterious insect bites the townsfolk were getting. However, business had been tough recently. Televisions had become permanent fixtures in homes and circus acts didn't draw the crowds they once did. Every town had a movie theatre and they came out with new attractions every month. People didn't get excited about the circus coming to town anymore. While they once drew huge crowds and stayed in a town for at least three days, they were now lucky to have a full tent in one evening. The problem wasn't money. Most of the house were at least a century old and had accumulated enough wealth to live quite comfortably. The problem lay in the demographics. The circus no longer attracted the whole town; it had become a family oriented past-time where parents brought their kids to 'see the animals', and families were hard to glamour and feed upon. Parents would notice bite marks and would surely notice if any child was unaccounted for, even for a short time. The risks were simply too big. There was no point in continuing the circus.

"Snap back into it!" hissed Pam.

Eric looked down to see Pam shoot him a filthy look just before he tossed her and she somersaulted back onto her trapeze. He knew this act so well he was doing it on autopilot.

"Aaand now… the aaaaaamazing Faluns will repeat their act but with _Pam _Falun as catcher!" announced Charlie. There was a collective gasp from the audience. With Eric being nearly 6'5", he looked like he would snap Pam's tiny 5'3" frame in half; through human eyes anyway.

Eric hooked the trapeze behind his knees and poised himself in the forward blange so Pam could catch him. Pam would catch him, swing a full arc and then swing him back to his trapeze. Just to tantalize the audience, Charlie would then count the number of somersaults Eric could do before Pam caught him. They'd done it a million times before.

"So which one is on the menu tonight?" Pam asked as she caught him after his first somersault.

"_One_." Charles counted with the audience.

"Guess." Eric answered just before she swung him back to his trapeze again.

Eric hooked his knees around the trapeze again and swung himself into a double somersault and back into Pam's grasp.

_"Two_._"_ The crowd below cheered.

"I don't need to guess Master, I _know _it's the well endowed brunette with two children sitting third row, eighth seat to the left."

"Tunc quare scisco?" Eric asked her in Latin, knowing full well it was Pam's weakest language.

"Show off!" Pam scowled.

"No, this is." Eric leapt into a double somersault back to his trapeze. He swung a couple of times to gain momentum and he catapulted himself in the air to do his usual triple somersault, but when Pam swung towards him to catch him, he didn't reach out for her. He let her swing back and forth one more time while he continued his sequence of somersaults at an increasing speed in mid air.

The audience sat in silence as they lost count.

He caught Pam's outstretched arms when they came back for him and the applause broke out from under them like a clap of thunder. Eric smiled up at Pam while her eyes were still wide from his little stunt.

* * *

"_WHAT_ the _hell_ was _that!_" screeched Charlie. They were in his trailer and Eric was dressed in his jeans and ready to start his evening. Eric always thought Charlie looked like a creepy penguin in that ringmaster getup, a frumpy tuxedo and an old battered top hat. Standing at only 5'6", Eric thought he could ignore him completely.

"Answer me you self centered, egotistical narcissist! What if there are reporters with cameras and other gidgets taping you! You could've outed the whole troop!"

"Relax Charlie, nobody reports the circus being in town anymore."

Charlie's face flushed red. What was red for Charlie's was slight tinge of peach on his alabaster cheek right under those dark shadowed eyes. In his death, Charlie's hair had turned from what must have been a platinum blonde to a flack waxy off-white. With the pale mauve of his lips, his complexion could not hide those godforsaken, nicotine riddled teeth his mouth encased. Vampires generally have very well sharpened and porcelain teeth enameled with immortality, but Charlie's century old habit of chewing tobacco was apparently even too much for that.

"I know you Eric! You did this to get laid! While this is just a buffet line for you, to some of us it's our livelihoods and to hell with your antics that put us all in danger!"

Charles Longton was a were who owned and ran a travelling freak show in London around the turn of the century along with his wife, Mary. Mary was also a were who had the uncanny ability to partially change between cycles of the moon. She had subsequently taken up the role of the bearded and hairy chested woman of the troop, while Charlie recruited other, destitute, supernatural beings to be part of this show. Pragmatic, with an enigmatic personality, his travelling band of supes was successful on both the business side and as an underground black market for all things supernatural. Naturally, the circus had become the 'go to' point for any inter-species dealings.

Charlie had one vice that was the death of him; literally. He loved to play his cards. He had once lost their whole month's earnings from the show and Mary had sworn to leave him if she caught him gambling again. That was why he had ended up frequenting that vampire den in Cheapside, so Mary wouldn't find out. That's where the trouble started. Charlie had had a few bad nights in a row and the vampires knew that the show was about to leave town and demanded that he pay them back. Charlie didn't have that kind cash, not the kind of cash that Mary wouldn't notice missing. His only alternative was to strike them a deal to get them some fairy blood. He knew two fairies were in town and it shouldn't have been that hard to slip them a little something so he could take some blood from them. Or so Charlie thought. Little did he know of the reputation of the two fairies in question as head torturers for a fairy prince. Their names were Neave and Lachlan.

Charlie turned up an inch away from death, a bloody crumpled heap in front of Mary's tent in the middle of the night. Luck had it they had a vampire in their troop at the time and he was turned with his consent. Apparently being a vampire suited Charlie just fine. As a mixed marriage of a were and a vampire, their status had improved their connections and their business dealings spectacularly. This was until the mid-thirties. Charlie saw the trouble coming a mile away when the Third Reich came into power in Germany. When Poland was invaded, he was ready to move the whole troop to the Americas within the month. He changed the image of the troop from a freak show to a circus and since then it was business as usual. Eric and Pam met up with Charlie when they found out that he had come to the States. They'd been here from Ireland for a while but had not found a suitable state to stay in. Charlie was still the 'go to' guy in supernatural circles and they needed some ideas about which state had a better regime. Charlie was extremely impressed with Eric's rare ability to fly and sold them on the idea on being a brother and sister trapeze act. They'd been doing this for the last forty years.

"I thought we were going to have a meeting about disbanding on Monday?" Eric mused. He didn't have the attachments Charlie had to this place and he was getting bored. He might leave the circus as soon as Pam picked up the courage to declare her independence.

"That's just the beginning of the discussions, we still have the next town booked."

Poor Charlie, Eric thought, he has no idea what he is going to do with himself when the circus disbanded. It's sad to watch him holding on the ledge with his fingertips.

Just when Eric was about to say something conciliatory to Charlie he spotted her. He pushed past Charlie and the small cluster of fans around his trailer and he chased her out to the field. He was wearing his favorite flares that made his long legs look even longer and tighten around his butt just right. The first three buttons of his shirt were undone just to show the first hints of the hair on his chest. Eric knew he looked good and if a little flaunting helped the moths come closer to the flame, why not?

"Excuse me? I think you dropped something." He said as he approached her with an inexpensive hairclip.

"Oh that's not mi-". She stopped as she looked up at him.

Eric had never seen such captivating eyes in his life. They looked like the layers of grey clouds of approaching thunderstorms at sea. They didn't realize they were staring into each other's eyes for good minute before a boy of about seven years old tugged her dress.

"Mommy? Are we going home?"

I must have her, Eric thought, even if she has kids! He'd glamour her to invite him to her house and he could pay her a visit when they were all tucked in.

"Please excuse me. I've forgotten my manners! I don't think that's mine." She then looked down at the male child and smiled. "Yes Jimmy we're going home and we'll start on the ice cream!"

"What a shame, I think it'll look great on you." He then artfully clipped it in her hair. "And it does." He made eye contact and said "Would you like me to come visit you tonight?"

"Well hold on there cowboy! You'd have to buy me dinner first!" She said as she tossed her head back in laughter.

What?

Eric caught her eyes again and this time he intensified his gaze. "Maybe you could come over and see me at my trailer?"

She looked past his shoulders at the small gaggle of girls waiting by his trailer door. "Honey, I understand a gentleman like yourself doesn't have to work for it, but I must insist you treat me like the lady that I am." She smiled. Not all was lost.

Eric took stock of the situation and decided he'd do anything to salvage it.

"My apologies, it is in such rapturous presence that I forget myself. I apologize for my rashness that could only be brought about by such intoxicating beauty. Will you please forgive me Mrs...?"

"It's Divine, _Ms._ Celeste Divine."

"Would you please accept, as a gesture of my apology, an invitation to a private dinner tomorrow night?"

Her grey eyes sparkled with mischief and Eric knew that he had it in the bag. The unusual thing was he actually felt excited.

"Only if you'll pick me up at eight, Mr. Falun."

Eric found a pen and she wrote her address on his arm and they parted company.

A human who was resistant to glamouring. Things were going to get very interesting.


End file.
